Annabel Lee Analysis
No one can get in between your feelings of love. Love can be described as one of the strongest forces known to man, and it is said to be capable of overcoming almost any obstacles. In the ballad style poem “Enable Lee” in which was both written and published by Edgar Allan Poe on October 9th of the year 1849, the poet openly describes his love and affection for the one and only Enable Lee. In this literary work of art, Edgar Allan Poe uses poetic devices such as imagery, symbolism, and repetition, to prove that love doesn’t necessarily fade, even when a couple is separated by death.
In the scholarly article which was published on April 25th, 2012 by an anonymous writer, the writer specifically tries to imply that the poem of Enable Lee written and published by Edgar Allan Poe, is strictly about a man who tries to reveal his obsession towards a women who in this case didn’t gradually return his “love’.
Although the poem may seem like your typical love story, many readers misinterpret this poem due to the fact that the poet describes his emotions towards the maiden sound quite more like an “obsession” rather than “love” itself.
The poem gradually reveals stanza by Tanta that the poet or in this case, the unreliable narrator is not sane. Within each stanza the poet emphasizes more of his distorted reality, which allows us as readers to decipher the madness of him losing his lover was present all along.
![](https://paperap.com/wp-content/themes/theme/img-rh/star.svg")
4.9 (247)
“ Rhizman is absolutely amazing at what he does . I highly recommend him if you need an assignment done ”
Most people that read the poem insist that the poet and Enable Lee loved with a love that was more than love. Although it may sound like an exaggeration, the narrator believes that this maiden lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by him. Since this is the poet who is making these declarations, we can draw a few conclusions based on his statements.
Since the poet states that the maiden really did live “with no other thought than to be loved and be loved by” the poet; the maiden did not have these thoughts but the poet strongly declares that she did. In contrast, the readers who begin to question the reliability of the poet after the reading the remainder of the poem they must question the accuracy of his wildly stricken assertions. The poet constantly points out that their love was stronger than any force known to them and he eventually begins to claim that the angels of heaven are jealous of the love that is shared between Enable Lee and the orator.
Such an assertion can be interpreted as either a fact or an opinion, as in how the poet has knowledge of the heavens that gives him access to the motivations of such divine beings. Or this can virtually be seen as an opinion coming from the poet himself as he states that the angels of heaven were jealous of the love that the lovers shared. When Enable Lee is declared dead in stanza 3, the poet adds two pieces of information to his poem. First, he reinforces the angel’s culpability by saying, ‘this is the reason” though he doesn’t yet acknowledge that the angel’s are divine “hit-men”.
The most ailing element of this stanza is that the poet reveals through his explanation that he is not in any way responsible for Enable Lee’s body or death. In fact the poets accusations about the angel’s being the divine hit men and killers of his maiden Enable Lee, left him declaring that they were incapable of accepting such pure love. The cause of Enable Lee according to the poet is that the wind came out of the clouds at night, eventually chilling and killing his Enable Lee. What makes that statement interesting is that it could be the most truthful and powerful line in the entire poem.
See, Enable Lee could’ve died from exposure to cold air; she could have developed pneumonia. There are probably many more possible methods of dying from exposure, but in this situation the poet connects the cold air killer and links it to the divine beings and identifies that the angel’s of heaven were the ons seeking to end Enables life. The poet IS understood to be in “love” with his maiden. His love for her is beyond anything that can be described. Now here’s the twist to this whole “love” story.
Towards the end of the poem the poet reveals that he spends his nights within his dead love’s tomb at the side of her body. Many people will gradually believe that Poe was trying to create a disturbing poem revealing that the poem was obsessed with a woman who may not have returned his love. Poe wanted to capture this obsession when he wrote Enable Lee by portraying a creepy stalker willing to sneak into his dead lovers crypt because of his certainty that he wants to be with him even in death. So can this poem really be seen as a poem of true love? Or can one another agree that Poe was clearly obsessed with his maiden?
I believe that Edgar Allen Poe was trying to create a poem that revealed his true emotions awards his maiden but his true emotions became virtually more of an obsession rather than love. As already noted the poem begins in a traditional form of a ballad. The speaker is talking in a calm tone and his language is very straightforward as well as having his poetic form tightly controlled. As his very first stanza moves into his fifth line, he begins to lose his control. Instead of sticking to his original ballad form, the speaker attaches two more line.
The purpose of adding those 2 lines is seen as surprising, especially on the second reading of the poem. One might expect the poet to announce his love for the Aden early in the poem as he sets the scene and introduces characters; instead, this speaker tells the reader that “this maiden she lived with no other though/ than to love and be loved by me. ” The exaggeration of “no other thought” could be seen as a form of having the poet talk about his own feelings, but to declare that another person adored oneself so fiercely sounds so desperate. The paranoia in the second through the fifth stanzas is very clear.
After Enable Lee is declared dead, the speaker feels that angels, demons, ad kinsmen are all trying to keep him from his love. As well as that he poet believes that the “angels” had killed his maiden out of malice and that “all men” knew it. When Enable Lee’s “high born kinsmen” come to entomb her dead body, the poet believes is that they are taking her away from him. All this perhaps could be attributed to a normal phase Of grief at the death of a loved one, in which this case the death of a recent one has left a fresh wound. Enable Lee, however, died “many and many a year ago. One might begin to wonder whether the speaker should be getting over the loss. Again, this instability on the part of the speaker is noticeable only on a second eating. Nothing he says in the first five stanzas is wrong enough to prepare the reader for some gruesome revelation in the sixth: that he in fact spends his nights lying beside Enable Lee’s dead body. Years after her death, she is still his “darling,” his “life”. In his poem Enable Lee, the narrator uses a lot of imagery to refer to the very last few moments as he reminisces about his beloved Enable Lee.
He uses a setting in which he states is a “kingdom by the sea”. In that statement, we can logically assume that was the location in which the narrator had fallen in love with his maiden. He wants to let us know as readers that him and his Enable Lee had first “fallen in love. ” It seems as if the speaker’s primary reason for telling his story is not to remind ice and enjoy again for a moment the pleasures of that great love that he shared with his maiden. Instead his purpose is to accuse those who tried to separate him from his Enable Lee and to tell them defiantly that their efforts did not work.
Although her death occurred “many and many a year ago” their love has not ended. The narrator is still devoted to her, still dreams of her, still feels that their souls are united. He has remained true to her; in fact, he has literally never left her side. He says in the poem’s last lines that he spends every night lying next to her in her sepulcher by the sea. Now we understand that the narrator is deeply in love with his maiden, but to sleep with a dead person, that is not close to normal. As much as we want to believe that he is in love, the way he acts with his dead maiden sounds quite more of an obsession.
Memories we all know can bring us joy but when love is involved we understand that it becomes more difficult for one to let go. But to sleep with a dead person, that sounds very absurd. The speaker is obsessed with how and why Enable died. He wants to know whom he can blame for it. At the same time, the themes Of death and love are tied together. The poem forces us to ask whether death is the end and has the power to kill love or whether, in fact love can triumph and continue after death. Maybe the speaker takes that idea a little more literally than he should, but that’s his business.
In a general way, we can all relate to the ideas of grief and loss and fate that come up when you talk about death. Imagery is used in this poem in the repeated phrase “In his kingdom by the sea”. The image this immediately gives is a castle that sits on a ledge overlooking the sea, which gives off a feeling of beauty and majestic romance, which adds to the feeling of love present throughout the poem. This also makes the poem a bit childlike, further supported by his claim that “l was a child and she was a child”.
However, this in no way detracts from the love felt throughout the poem as this childlikeness is supposed to link us to fantasy the type of love that he felt he had with Enable Lee. As well as in this poem, the author Uses a lot Of repetition. The phrase “Of the dutiful Enable Lee is repeated constantly throughout the poem. This figurative language portrays that Enable Lee is beautiful; however, the fact that it is repeated throughout the poem adds even more to this description as it shows that the speaker can find no faults in Enable Lee and only sees her as beautiful.
The poem also eludes to the Bible through its mention of “seraphs of heaven”, “angels”, and “demons”. This is used to emphasize how tragic the loss of Enable was to the speaker as he blames it on the angels and relates them to “demons down under the sea” for their actions. This Eden relation of angels to demons is a huge degradation and insult to angels, showing just how outraged the speaker is at them. Last but not least, this poem consists of using symbolism. Of course, Enable Lee is a huge symbol by herself.
Literally, this poem is talking about a girl named Enable Lee who had just died to a cold. However, Enable Lee is obviously a symbol for a loved one of the poet, Edgar Allan Poe, who passed away. Finally, the “tomb” mentioned in the last stanza is also symbol. Taken literally, it means that the speaker goes to her grave each day to lie down with her to show his eve and to be close to her. However, it can also be a symbol for the fact that the speaker is going to die soon and will finally be rejoined with his loved Enable Lee.
The strange thing is that Edgar Allan Poe really did die the Same year that he wrote this poem. All 3 of these poetic devices used in this very poem reflect back to how his love for Enable Lee never changed even after she was killed. The way that the narrator is able to use symbols and repetition as well as imagery to express his love and true emotions for his lover, it gets the reader thinking that maybe it is impossible for anyone to get him to let go f his lover.
Although Enable Lee is gone physically, her death ha not separated their love because the narrator still feels their souls connected. Regardless whether a person is physically there or if they’re not, the love that you have for them will never change. Therefore that is why I believe that no one can get in between your feelings of love.
Annabel Lee Analysis. (2018, Apr 01). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/paper-on-annabel-lee-analysis/
